Medical devices may be used to deliver therapy to patients to treat a variety of symptoms or conditions, such as chronic pain, tremor, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, neuralgia, urinary or fecal incontinence, sexual dysfunction, obesity, or gastroparesis. A medical device may deliver stimulation therapy via leads that include electrodes located proximate to the spinal cord, pelvic nerves, stomach, or within the brain of a patient. In some cases, electrodes may be integrated with an implantable pulse generator, eliminating the need for leads. In some cases, a medical device may deliver a drug or another fluid to a specific tissue site within the patient via a catheter attached to the medical device. Alternatively, a patient with a neurological disease may be treated with external sensory cue. In any case, the medical device is used to provide treatment to the patient as needed in order in increase the quality of life of the patient. The medical device may be implanted or located externally, depending upon the type of therapy and needs of the patient.
A clinician may program the medical device to effectively treat the patient. For example, the clinician may define the therapy to be delivered to a patient by selecting values for one or more programmable therapy parameters. As one example, in the case of electrical stimulation, the clinician may select an amplitude, which may be a current or voltage amplitude, and pulse width for a stimulation waveform to be delivered to the patient, as well as a rate at which the pulses are to be delivered to the patient. Programmable therapy parameters also may include electrode combinations and polarities. The clinician may also create multiple programs having various different therapy parameter combinations that the patient may use as desired in order to find the most effective therapy parameters to treat a condition.
At least in the case of a chronic therapy delivery system, the patient begins to use the medical device for continued treatment during normal daily activities after an initial programming session with the clinician. During treatment, the patient may need to adjust the therapy parameters in order to increase the efficacy of the therapy. Adjustments to therapy may include, for example, turning the therapy on and off, switching between therapy programs, and increasing or decreasing therapy amplitude. The patient uses an external programmer, e.g., a patient programmer, to communicate any desired adjustments to the medical device. As an example, the external programmer may be a hand-held computing device that includes a user interface that allows the user to select certain adjustments to therapy. The patient may select the adjustments and the external programmer communicates the adjustments to the medical device, resulting in an adjusted therapy. The patient may continue to use the external programmer throughout the duration of therapy in order to retrain efficacious therapy.